Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary on sustainable investing
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Climate tech has been one of the bright spots in the economy as other industries continue to cut back and investment dries up. Global investments in the space reached $1.1 trillion in 2022 , according to a Bloomberg analysis. In the U.S., sustainability funding dipped just 2% last year, despite an overall drop off in investments.?
But will climate change continue to have its moment as the economy continues to slow? Few Americans are in the room when deals are made or get to hear from investors first-hand what their rationale is for the tech that gets the big bucks.
Shark Tank, which starts filming its 15th season next week, cracks the door open to give viewers a glimpse at what investors care about today.
I sat down with shark Kevin O’Leary to discuss sustainability investments and the role companies play in the energy transition. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.
What kind of investments are you making in this space?
Getting rid of hydrocarbons all together in five years is impossible. We're going to have to figure out a way to engage hydrocarbons but take out the carbon risks. What technology can we use to actually take carbon out of the ground but put back what we don't need back under where it came from? I'm investing in that space. I'm looking at new refineries that sequester carbon...and where that's being developed right now is North Dakota. So in places like West Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma and West Texas, I'm very interested in investing in energy infrastructure that has a climate mandate built into it. I’ve found that we can build these small modular refineries for around $2 billion, producing 50,000 barrels a day and sequester all the carbon back into the ground, so we can reduce our carbon footprint as we go through the transition to wind, as we go to transition to maybe hydrogen or solar. All of these things are options.
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More companies are being evaluated for their ESG goals. Is that the right benchmark to evaluate their sustainability initiatives?
The way I look at ESG is you've got to be transparent if you're going to create an ESG index or an ESG grading system. The only way this is going to work is to get people on board with this – and I think it has merit as an idea – is to be 100% transparent on how you created those rules. The industry has failed on this, so I will not invest with a blind ESG pool that does not tell me how they made those rules up, and they just tell me this company is compliant. I have to know why.
What role do small businesses play? Is it a necessity for them too to have sustainability initiatives to get customers, like Gen Z, who are more environmentally-oriented?
The reason small businesses are very concerned about this – and they are – is their customers are mandating that when you bring a service or good to market, you have to have a sustainability mission. That is what one-third of your consumers want to hear about. They want to know that you've ethically produced the product and that you care about sustainability. What we probably need to establish pretty quickly to support small businesses on this is to provide them some way to trade carbon credits…so that they can answer these questions. The reason small businesses care is that a third of their customers want it; not 10%, not 5%, not 1%. This thing has become mainstream. It's not going away. It's a forever issue. And companies that do solve for it are rewarded by loyal customers, and I might add higher margins.
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1 年In 2006, I edited a book, Opposing Viewpoints: Energy Alternatives. Each chapter was on a different energy resource and included digests of articles for and against each of them. I read hundreds of articles to ensure that the opinions expressed in each chapter were balanced. Pres. Ronald Reagan, when he took office in 1980, ordered the removal of the solar panels from the White House roof. Reagan endlessly mocked the environmental movement for seeking alternative energy sources and former Pres. Jimmy Carter for working with Congress to legislate fuel-efficient, high-mileage "K cars." Since Reagan mocked every mention of the environment, the word green became an acceptable substitute. According to Reagan, a pawn of the oil and gas industry and auto manufacturers, every effort to reduce use of fossil fuels, could lead to destroying the economy. Instead of 25 MPG vehicles, the automobile industry produced 8 MPG SUVS. Do the math--how many more gallons of gas have been used by thousands of vehicles over the past 40 years? What shape would the world's environment be in if fuel efficiency had continued to be a goal of American auto manufacturers.
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1 年Sequestering is all well and good but the original post lacks details. "IF" what is meant by putting putting carbon underground (presumably CO2) then all one is doing is creating a ticking time bomb. Why ? Let me tell you. There IS such thing as a family (species, genus - what ever) of bacteria called Methanogens. So what do they do ? How do they live deep underground ? Simply put they "eat CO2" and as a waste product they produce, Methane. As green house gases go Methane (or CH4) is worse than CO2. How do I know this ? Before I was an architect I was in geology. And in the final year of my B.Sc. (1981-82) my thesis supervisors researched ground water as well as hydrocarbons in southern Ontario. The scientific world has known about these little critters for 40+ years, probably a LOT longer than that. What does sequestering CO2 several thousand feet underground mean ? Nothing bad as long as the gases stay down there. IF on the other hand they escape to the surface THEN your global warming impact is worse than if you had just put CO2 into the atmosphere.